Notwithstanding the innumerable inducements to adopt the ways of the gorgio house-dweller, tradesman, mechanic, sharper or swindler, the traditional life of the Romany has been proof against them; pricking the garter and thimble-rigging are of the past, the purse trickster and others of that ilk have had their day; but the same Romany types will be still found attending the same fairs, gaining a livelihood in practically the same manner as fifty years ago. They boast that their people will never die out,—an assertion that can, of course, be proved by time alone,—but it is certain that various writers, during the last hundred years, have spoken of them as a fast disappearing race, and have stated that they would become merged in, or absorbed by, the main population; it is to be feared, however, that those who could write in this strain, had not closely studied the people, for, as a matter of fact, there is scarcely greater reason to expect the Romanies to become extinct as a people, than that the Jews should lose their racial characteristics, while unbiassed investigation of the matter would seem to urge the opinion that the type will persist. In this respect the gypsy must not for a moment be likened to the aboriginal Australian, or to the Red man, for while they are gradually but not the less surely being extinguished by the vices they have adopted from the white man, the gypsy adapts himself to circumstances to a certain extent but keeps more or less aloof from the “Gentile” and is in little danger of becoming so civilized—if we may so term it—as to lose in any degree his hold upon, or fidelity to, gypsydom, and down to the present time he has falsified predictions by declining to die off. Most of the present-day fairs bring together a good sprinkling of the “people of Egypt,” as the gypsies at one time called themselves, and I have often met in my own locality some whom I have seen at similar gatherings in other parts of the country. At one anniversary of the local fair when a goodly number of my gorgio acquaintances happened to be present, a Romany girl espied me as I sauntered along between the stalls, and said as she slipped her arm through mine— “Come along with me, my Rye; I’ll show you something to photo,” and to the evident astonishment of those of my friends whose conduct was regulated by Mrs. Grundy, I was escorted just out of the fair to where an old woman was seated beside a ditch. “There!” exclaimed my dusky guide, “she’ll make a good photo; she ain’t long for this world, so you’d better get one now.”